Chapter Text
The house was hollow now, not just empty, but completely abandoned by warmth. It was a rotting husk of walls and memories, sagging under the weight of years he had poured into it with calloused hands and his goddamned stubborn hope. He had spent almost his whole life inside these walls.
But now, the siding peeled like old scabs, curling away from wood he had once patched himself. The porch steps bowed in the middle, warped by rain and neglect, but he remembered when they were solid. He remembered carrying boxes up them. The windows stared out at the street like blind eyes, filmed with dust and city grime. Once, light used to spill through them in the mornings catching dust in the air while someone complained about coffee and someone else burned toast.
He swallowed that image down before it could linger.
Inside, the air was cold and stale, untouched, like even time itself refused to crawl in here anymore. It carried the dry scent of dust and old wood, undercut with something metallic from rusting pipes hidden behind the walls. When he breathed in too deeply, it tasted faintly of plaster.
The kitchen felt smaller than it used to. Or maybe he had just grown too large for it - too heavy with things he couldn’t put down. The cabinets pressed inward from all sides, thick and suffocating. Not a single door hung straight, each one tilted slightly, hinges loose because he never took the five minutes to fix them. There had always been something more urgent.
A patrol. A report. A promotion review.
The countertops were laminate, bubbled from years of heat and moisture. Edges chipped to reveal the dark particleboard beneath, swollen and soft in places. The sink was stained a permanent gray, a rust halo blooming beneath the faucet where it had dripped for years unchecked. He had meant to fix that too.
He had meant to fix a lot of things. He had meant to make this place permanent. A real home and not just walls where they hid from the world.
He sat at the kitchen table - square, heavy and stubborn. The varnish had long ago worn away where hands used to rest. Knife marks carved shallow scars across its surface. A dark burn mark near the center bloomed outward like a bruise. The wood carried the dull sheen of something handled too often and cared for too little.
His boots were propped on the scarred surface as if the old rules no longer applied. He could still hear himself barking about respect, about discipline. No boots on the table, no elbows, no mess. He had said it so many times it became law because structure was safety and discipline was love - even if he never called it that. Even if he only ever knew how to shape it into orders.
Now there was no one left to correct.
The chair creaked beneath his weight with a thin, splintering complaint. Everything in the house creaked. The pipes. The beams. The slow settling of wood that had absorbed too many winters.
The memories.
He remembered the way the floorboards used to tremble when all three of them ran down the hallway at once. It sounded like chaos - boots pounding, laughter bouncing off the walls. He used to step into the doorway and bark at them to slow down before someone broke their neck. But every time the sound stopped too suddenly, his heart lurched because silence meant something was wrong and noise meant they were safe.
There had been a loose baluster on the staircase - the last one on the left. Kowalski had “accidentally” kicked it once during an argument, frustrated and brimming with teenage indignation. The crack had echoed sharp and ugly. Skipper had nearly exploded.
The couch still sagged permanently on one side because Rico refused to sit like a normal human being - upside down, sideways, draped over the armrest like gravity was optional. He’d complain every single time but the kid treated it like a game to see how far was too far.
There was still a dent in the drywall from when Private had thrown a pillow too hard. It had been such a small thing - a stupid, harmless argument that escalated into a pillow tossed with more force than intended. The impact had sounded like a gunshot in the quiet house. Private had gone pale immediately. He’d stood frozen, staring at the dent like he’d shattered something sacred. His lip had trembled. His breathing had turned shallow.
He stared at the dent for a long, deliberate moment. Long enough for the silence to stretch. Long enough for Private’s eyes to gloss with unshed tears. He remembered the exact second he decided.
He exhaled and said, flat and dismissive - adds character.
On the far wall, faint lines still marked their heights. He forced himself to look at them. Pencil scratches, dates written beside them in his own handwriting - precise and blocky. A wall where he marked their heights as they grew.
He made it a habit with Kowalski, marking each year carefully, watching the boy stretch taller and taller. As time passed, pride had mixed with frustration - he remembered scolding him gently when he slouched for the mark, muttering about “standing straight, boy,” even as he marveled at how quickly Kowalski outgrew him. Rico, as always, treated it as a game, stretching on tiptoe, trying to beat Kowalski’s mark, grinning even when he failed.
Private’s marks were sparse, careful, tentative. The smallest, gentlest, always polite about standing against the wall, like he didn’t want to intrude. The empty space above his last mark felt like a weight in Skipper’s chest. It was a reminder of time slipping away, of the moments he hadn’t been able to protect or guide, and of the years he feared he’d never get to watch.
A cigarette glowed like a dying star between his fingers. Smoke curled upward in slow, drowning spirals, collecting against the yellowed ceiling before thinning into nothing. He watched it disappear the way people disappeared in this city - quietly, without ceremony, without headlines. One day present and the next day gone.
He took another drag, deep enough to make his lungs protest. The burn settled in his chest, sharp and grounding. It kept his hands from shaking. It kept him here, while he stared at the empty doorway where they used to crowd shoulder-to-shoulder, arguing over nothing important. The silence pressed in where their noise used to live.
A faint shift of gravel scraped against the porch outside, almost timid, almost polite, but it tore through the house like a blade slicing through paper. Skipper’s chest tightened.
The Redhats hunted louder men, louder crimes - smashed doors, shouted commands, flooded hallways with boots and fury. But when the prize was a traitor wearing their own damn uniform, they practiced restraint. Silence meant respect. Silence meant personal.
Traitor.
The word had already made its way through the ranks. In his mind he could see it stamped across his file in thick red ink.
SUBJECT: DEFECTED.
THREAT LEVEL: SEVERE.
He could almost hear Reeves saying it, and what unsettled him most was not anger, not outrage, not even betrayal, but the complete absence of emotion. Reeves would deliver the word the same way he delivered logistical updates or casualty summaries. A faint tightening around the mouth. A pause just long enough to signal mild inconvenience.
Not a fallen comrade. Not a man who had served faithfully for years. Just a resource that had ceased functioning as intended.
Because that was what Skipper had been to them all along - equipment. Maintained, deployed, calibrated for maximum efficiency. A weapon with a name attached to make it easier to command.
The irony almost made him laugh.
They had called civilians insurgents for wanting food. Terrorists for wanting freedom. Radicals for asking questions that did not align with policy. Collateral when they happened to be standing in the wrong doorway at the wrong hour. He had sat in those rooms while those words were spoken in calm, rational tones. Fluorescent lights had buzzed overhead, casting everything in a sterile glow that made blood look almost theoretical. Reports were arranged neatly on the table, photographs slid across polished surfaces, faces blurred by low resolution or deliberate editing until they became shapes instead of people.
He had been enforcing fear.
At the time, he told himself it was necessary. That chaos would devour what little order remained if someone did not stand firm. That history proved weakness invited collapse. He convinced himself that he was not crushing people but containing instability. He told himself that he was the wall between civilization and ruin.
Every raid approved, every curfew tightened, every sweep executed in the name of stability had narrowed the space ordinary people were allowed to breathe. He remembered the smell of those operations - fear sharp enough to taste. He remembered children staring at him from behind their parents’ legs, their eyes wide and uncomprehending, as if trying to understand what they had done wrong.
They had used him. They had used his loyalty. His belief in something bigger than himself. They had not controlled him with threats or fear. They had controlled him with affirmation. With rank. With purpose. They had recognized his need for structure, for belonging, for a system that made sense of a fractured world. They handed him promotions like proof that he was indispensable, that his discipline and severity were virtues. They told him he was essential, that he was exactly the kind of leader the Authority required in uncertain times.
He had been the Authority’s hand, steady and unhesitating. He had been their weapon, honed and sharpened by years of reinforcement. He had been their obedient dog, trained to respond to command rather than conscience. He had marched their orders into rooms filled with terrified faces and called it stabilization. He had kicked down doors and told himself that the echo of splintering wood was the sound of order being restored. He had carried out raids without blinking, without allowing his pulse to betray even a flicker of doubt, because he believed that duty was a shield against moral failure.
He absorbed it all.
There had been a time when he despised men who hid behind power - men who justified cruelty with policy, who reduced lives to numbers so they could sleep at night. He had once believed he would be different, that if he ever held authority, he would wield it with restraint and clarity.
The higher he climbed, the more blood he saw.
He was furious, and the fury did not burn bright and wild but deep and corrosive, settling into his bones like acid. He was furious that they had taken something earnest and disciplined inside him, something that had once genuinely wanted to protect, and reshaped it into obedience. He was furious that they had trained him to turn his doubt inward, to question his own hesitation, his own conscience, instead of lifting his eyes and asking whether the rot came from above. And he was furious that the men stepping onto this porch tonight would do so with the same rigid certainty he once carried in his spine, convinced they were preserving order, convinced they were righteous, convinced that whatever they were about to do was necessary.
They were coming to silence a problem. Not a man. Not a history of service. Not years of loyalty poured into their machine. Just a problem.
The word coiled in his chest. He almost wanted them to see his face when they breached the door. Almost wanted them to understand, in one flicker of recognition, that this was the inevitable result of what they had built. That when you grind men down into weapons and point them at the world long enough, eventually one of them will turn around and ask why.
- Took you long enough - he muttered, and there was no humor in it, only a hard edge that scraped his throat raw.
He had known they would come. Of course they would. You do not walk out on the Authority and expect mercy, not when you have spent years inside its machinery, not when you understand exactly how unmerciful it is by design. Mercy was inefficient. Mercy created precedent. Mercy weakened the message.
And he was not just another deserter slipping through their fingers - he was a former commander who knew their routes, their tactics, their tells. He was a loose thread dangling from a uniform stitched too tight, and they were the kind of organization that would burn down an entire neighborhood just to make sure no one saw the unraveling.
He understood that because he had once approved those fires.
That was why he had sent the boys away, far from this house and far from the shadow of his name, tucked into a pocket of the underground where the Authority’s reach thinned and the air did not taste like surveillance. He had placed them with people he trusted more than he trusted himself, because for the first time in years he could admit that his judgment had been compromised by pride and belief and the desperate need to be useful.
They deserved something solid. Something honest. Not the brittle illusion of safety he had sold them for years while wearing a uniform that made him both shield and threat. They deserved mornings without fear stitched into the quiet, evenings that did not hinge on curfew sirens, a future that was not contingent on how well he performed for men like Reeves.
More than anything, they deserved a world that did not look like him standing in that uniform, issuing orders he no longer believed in.
He stayed behind as bait, and there was nothing noble about the decision, nothing cinematic or heroic in the way it settled over him. He did not remain because he was fearless, and he certainly did not stay because he imagined himself as some tragic martyr standing alone against the dark. He remained because the truth had finally embedded itself in him like shrapnel, jagged and immovable, and no matter how much he tried to ignore it, it tore at him every time he breathed.
As long as he lived, as long as his name existed in their files and his face existed in their memory, he was a danger to them.
Another sound carried through the night, subtle but unmistakable - the faint scrape of metal brushing against the siding, followed by the nearly imperceptible shift of boots adjusting in formation. They were close now, close enough that he could map their positions in his head without seeing them, close enough that he could anticipate the angle of their approach and the exact second they would decide to breach.
For a fleeting moment, a bitter sense of recognition twisted in his chest. They were moving exactly the way he had taught them to move.
He crushed the cigarette into the edge of the table with his bare thumb, pressing down until the ember surrendered with a soft hiss, the faint sting of heat barely registering against the storm already raging inside him. Smoke curled upward and then vanished into the dimness as the house seemed to fold back into shadow, the walls absorbing the last fragile glow as though they understood what was coming.
In the heavy quiet that followed, he drew in a slow breath. Not the kind that steadies a man before battle, not the kind that prepares him to fight, but the kind that comes when resistance has already been measured and accepted. There was no relief in it, no peace, only a hard, settled understanding that this moment had been approaching since the day he turned his back on them.
- Come on then - he murmured into the hollow stillness, the words directed as much at himself as at the men outside. His voice did not tremble, though his pulse beat hard against his ribs, each thud reminding him that he was still here, still capable of choosing how this ended.
If this was the end they wanted, he would give it to them on his own terms. He rose from the chair and the sharp, chemical reek of gasoline surged up around him, saturating the air so thickly it burned the back of his throat and made his eyes sting. It soaked into the cuffs of his pants and splashed across his boots, seeping into the old wood floors that had once held nothing more dangerous than muddy footprints and spilled coffee. The house he had built as a shelter now stood primed like a fuse.
In his fist, he gripped the old lighter he had carried for years, the metal worn smooth by touch. His thumb hovered just shy of the wheel, suspended in that fragile space between action and consequence. He did not hesitate. There was no internal debate left to have.
If this was how it ended, it would end with him choosing it.
The door exploded inward with a single violent crack, wood splintering under the force of the breach, the sound reverberating through the frame like a gunshot. Heavy boots thundered across the threshold, disciplined and fast, and a beam of blinding white light cut through the darkness to pin him in place.
- Hands in the air! - someone shouted, the command sharp and rehearsed, identical to the ones he had given countless times before.
For a fraction of a second, time stretched thin. The beam of light trained on his face grew harsher, bleaching his vision until the room dissolved into white glare and shadow. Someone shouted again, a command layered with urgency, but the words themselves blurred into noise, stripped of meaning. What he registered instead was the choreography - the precise spreading of boots across the wooden floor, the calculated angles, the disciplined control of space. It almost made him smile.
Slowly he raised his hands, allowing them to see compliance in the gesture, allowing them to believe they had achieved what they came for. The lighter rested in his palm for one final heartbeat, its metal casing warm from his grip. When it slipped from his fingers, the motion was controlled and precise, disguised as weakness but guided by intention. It fell through the heavy, fuel-thick atmosphere in a slow arc that felt almost suspended in time, the scent of gasoline sharp and overwhelming, burning at the back of his throat as though the house itself was already inhaling.
The lighter hit the floor with a muted metallic click, skidding once across the gasoline-slick wood before settling on its side. For the briefest moment, nothing happened. The bright beams trained on him washed the floor in sterile white, almost drowning it out. Then, beneath that glare, a smaller light appeared.
It was almost delicate at first - a thin, wavering tongue of orange struggling upright from the lighter’s mouth, trembling in the thick fumes. It did not roar. It did not explode. It simply existed, fragile and persistent, a living thing no larger than a candle’s breath.
The gasoline fumes caught before the liquid did.
A faint blue shimmer rippled outward along the floorboards, so subtle it might have been mistaken for a trick of the light. The flame leaned sideways, drawn by the invisible trail he had poured with steady hands. It stretched, tasted the air, and then found purchase.
A thin line of brightness skated across the wood grain, tracing the cracks and imperfections in the boards he had once meant to sand smooth. It moved with quiet hunger, threading through seams, slipping into the shallow knife marks carved years ago into the table’s edge, following the path he had mapped for it.
Heat bloomed outward in a soft wave, warming the air before anyone fully understood what they were seeing. The gasoline ignited in a low, rolling whisper that sounded almost like breath being drawn in.
For a suspended second, the fire seemed impossibly small compared to the men in armor and the weapons in their hands. Then it spread.
The thin ribbon of light fractured into branching veins, racing outward in sudden, luminous streaks that crawled across the floor with terrifying speed. The wood drank it in. The fumes carried it faster than footsteps could retreat.
And in its glow, Skipper watched it take the path he had chosen.